Page 111 of Cruel King

We sit in silence for a few minutes as he continues to sketch me sitting next to him before I say, “You’ve been here for me this entire time. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to be there for you. He was your brother, the one you were closest to all your life.”

Matthias holds up his sketch book to show me pictures he’s drawn, and as he turns each page, I see they’re all of Theo. Some are of him laughing and joking around like he loved to do, while some are serious. Some show him shooting pool and watching TV in the game room as he did so often when he was a kid, and others are of him driving his race car. Each one is a testament to how much Matthias loved him.

With tears in my eyes, I touch his arm. “They’re beautiful. I love every single one of them.”

He sets the book aside and sighs. “Everyone mourns in their own way. This is my way of saying goodbye to him.”

When he returns to the sketch he began when I sat down here tonight, I don’t understand. Is he saying goodbye to me?

“Why are you drawing me? I’m not going anywhere.”

Matthias lifts his head and smiles. “Because you’re my favorite person to draw. It combines two of my loves.”

Touched by how sweet he is when I need it most, I lean over and kiss him softly on the cheek. “I love you. Thank you for waiting for me.”

“Always.”

“I’m so sorry I got lost, Matthias. I couldn’t find my way out of my sadness.” I stop and shake my head. “No, that’s not exactly true. I didn’t want to for a long time. I felt like it would be wrong for me to.”

He lifts his head and looks at me, and in his eyes I see he’s worried tonight is only temporary. “Why?”

“Because I loved Theo for all my life. He was my best friend, and the thought of never being able to make it up to him for what I did made it feel wrong to not be so sad.”

Matthias nods and then lets out a heavy sigh. “You didn’t do anything wrong, Ava. That blame belongs with me, and I’ll have to live with it for the rest of my life. I want you to know I did get to talk to him. I wanted him to know all he had to do was come back and I knew you’d go with him. I tried, but he was so closed off. I couldn’t get him to listen to me.”

As he confesses that he was willing to watch me leave with his brother, I realize how much I love Matthias. Reaching out, I take his hand in mine and hold it, needing to feel him right now.

“I wouldn’t have gone. Theo was right. I didn’t tell him what happened between us because it meant something to me. If I had left with him, I’d have missed you. Even in the darkness of all my sadness these last couple months, I knew you were there for me. You have no idea how important that was because more than a few times, I felt myself slipping away. But then you’d come sit with me or I’d see you at dinner and I knew I had you. What I didn’t think about was how you had nobody this whole time, Matthias, and I’m sorry for that.”

He nods but doesn’t say anything before he goes back to drawing me. After a while, out of the corner of my eye I see papers sticking out from under his pillow.

“Do you keep that picture you drew of me under your head when you sleep?” I ask, touched at such a small gesture.

But he shakes his head before glancing up at me. “No. It’s right where it’s always been in my sketchbook.”

I reach over and pull out a small stack of papers from under his pillow. “Oh, I thought these were that sketch. What are they?”

Matthias gives me a tiny smile and returns to his drawing. “Letters.”

Quickly, I stuff them back in their original place. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry. I just thought…”

“You can look at them. They’re letters to you.”

“To me? What do you mean?”

He turns and slides them out from under the pillow before setting them in my lap. In his dark eyes, I see he wants me to read them.

“I wrote you letters these past few months. I was going to give them to you each time I wrote one, but then I decided to just keep them. They’re yours, though, so you can read them if you want.”

The memory of the last time he wrote to me and never having the chance to read those letters makes sadness wash over me. I don’t want anything between us this time, so whatever he said, no matter how hard it is for me to read, I have to face up to what I’ve done to him.

“Okay,” I say quietly as fear begins to creep into me.

I unfold the first piece of paper and see only a few words on it. As my gaze slowly slides over them, I can’t help feeling like Matthias has suffered so much more than I ever thought.

Ava,

I wish you were there with me today when we said goodbye to Theo. I kept reaching for your hand as I stood by the gravesite with my brothers, but there was no hand to hold. I know you’re grieving like I am, but I miss you.